


The Doctor Is In

by mountain_born



Series: The Marvelous Tale of an Agent, an Archer, and an Assassin [48]
Category: Doctor Who (2005), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crossover, Doctor Who/Avengers Crossover Fusion, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-06
Updated: 2018-10-06
Packaged: 2019-07-27 03:44:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16210721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mountain_born/pseuds/mountain_born
Summary: In order to be an effective Avenger, Bruce Banner needs to get a handle on his "condition."  Fortunately, the Doctor has a little time on his hands.





	The Doctor Is In

**Author's Note:**

> As ever and always, thanks to the marvelous **like-a-raven** for always keeping me on track.
> 
> This story contains allusions to the Doctor Who episode, _The Beast Below._
> 
> Thank you for reading!

_November 2012_   
_London, England_   
_The Pond Residence_

Amy and Rory were happy to see him. The Doctor wasn’t sure he deserved that, but he was selfishly glad of it.

“Who wants more tea?” Rory asked. 

The Doctor and Amy both held up their empty mugs. Rory collected them and headed for the kitchen. “Hey, bring that packet of biscuits when you come back, please?” Amy called after him. 

“Yep,” Rory called back.

Amy smiled across the coffee table at the Doctor. She was in the old, overstuffed green chair, her feet tucked up and a fleece blanket across her lap against the autumn chill. “You can stay for dinner, yeah? There’s a great fish and chips takeaway on the high street,” she said.

“I’d love to,” the Doctor replied.

It almost felt like old times. Yes, a lot of the time the Doctor spent with Amy and Rory was spent running through Time and Space, saving worlds and having grand adventures. But there had also been a fair amount of this, just lounging about and enjoying each other’s company. Visiting Amy was a little bit like coming home, though the Doctor was hard pressed to say why. Perhaps it was because of the way they’d met. Amy’s face had been the first one he’d set eyes on the last time he’d regenerated. Somehow that had sealed her onto his hearts, and Rory as well by association. 

_You’re like a duckling. You imprinted on them,_ the Doctor thought.

This was the first time he’d come around to visit them since Demons Run. Amy and Rory were taking a break from traveling. They were still coming to terms with losing their daughter. . .and the shock of finding her again at SHIELD. It wasn’t every day that you found out that one of your best friends was, in fact, your lost baby girl.

Amy and Rory needed time and space, and not the kind that the Doctor and his blue box could provide. The Doctor had been trying to respect that, refraining from pestering them overly much. But stepping away altogether seemed just as problematic, hence the visit.

Besides, he missed them.

“So, where are you off to next?” Amy asked.

The Doctor thought about lying, or at least obfuscating. But again, that didn’t seem like the most helpful thing.

“I was thinking of popping around SHIELD,” the Doctor said. “Just to see how they’re getting on. I imagine that, what with being splashed all over the news, River and Clint might need a distraction.”

“Yeah. They’re not happy about that,” Amy said. The Doctor raised his eyebrows and she continued. “I talked to River the day after it aired. She was pretty philosophical about it but, well, you know how she and Clint are about attention. Spies.”

The Doctor couldn’t help but grin. “You talked to her?”

“Yeah.” Amy shifted a little and treated the Doctor to a half-hearted glare. “I’m trying.”

“I know you are,” the Doctor said. “And I know it’s hard, but I’m glad you’re talking.”

He was sure River was glad of it, too. Amy had been angry with her in the aftermath of Demons Run. The Doctor knew that River had taken that rather hard.

“Anyway, I’m glad you’re going over here,” Amy said. “Someone needs to keep an eye on them.”

“You could come along,” the Doctor offered. “You could check up on them in person.”

For a second, he thought Amy was going to say yes, but then she shook her head. “I don’t think I’m ready for that just yet,” she said, staring down at her lap.

“That’s all right.”

“But I will be.” Amy raised her head again. The Doctor couldn’t help but notice that she looked tired and worn around the edges, but she still had the familiar determined gleam in her eyes. “I’m not letting Kovarian and her goons take my baby away from me twice.”

“That’s my Pond.”

*****

_The Next Day_  
 _SHIELD Headquarters, New York_  
 _Nick Fury’s Office_

“You know, Nadine is going to shoot you one of these days if you keep landing the TARDIS in the middle of her office,” Fury said.

It wouldn’t be a fatal shot, but Fury wouldn’t put it past Nadine to clip the Doctor just to make a point. Among the things that Fury appreciated about Agent Nadine Washington were her composure, her competence, and her deadpan and sometimes unorthodox ability to deal with nonsense. She was also highly skilled in firearms and hand-to-hand combat. After all, Washington had been a field agent before a knee injury had sidelined her and forced her to switch to Administration. She’d been Fury’s executive assistant for over a decade. She knew his whereabouts at (almost) all times, she kept him apprised of whatever gossip and rumors might be floating around Headquarters, and in the event that the Director’s office was ever breached by hostiles, she was capable of acting as Fury’s final line of defense. 

All of which was to say that she took kind of a dim view of UFOs appearing in her office suite.

“I mean,” Fury continued, “at least call ahead and make an appointment.”

The Doctor grinned at Fury over the rim of his mug of tea. “I’ve never been very good at keeping appointments,” he said.

“Which is an interesting weakness for a man with a time machine.”

The Doctor shrugged a little sheepishly. “I’ll send Agent Washington my apologies. Still, I should think she would take it much more amiss if I skipped the formalities, and just landed in the middle of your office. I’m trying to respect SHIELD protocol.”

Fury snorted. “That would be a first for you.”

The Doctor had been turning up at SHIELD Headquarters without anything resembling official permission for years, ever since he had first discovered River Song and had his curiosity piqued. Fury could have raised a stink about the unauthorized visits, beyond the _pro forma_ grumbling he’d indulged in, but he hadn’t. He’d had his orders when it came to the Doctor and his burgeoning friendship with Song, Barton, and Coulson.

Besides, Fury had known that the education those three would get by running with the Doctor would prove to be invaluable.

This visit was a little different. The Doctor had come on business this time, offering his services to Fury in exchange for being able to hang out at SHIELD for a while. Fury had raised an eyebrow, but he was no fool. SHIELD R&D was good, but the Doctor’s expertise was unparalleled. He could think of a project or five that the Doctor could help them with. The challenge would be to pick the most pressing.

There was a buzz and Agent Washington’s voice came over the intercom. “Agents Song and Barton are here, sir.”

“Send them in,” Fury said, setting aside his coffee mug.

The fact that Fury was no fool also meant that he knew better than to just let the Doctor dangle at loose ends while at HQ. The Time Lord was going to gravitate to Song and Barton anyway. Might as well make them the Doctor’s official escorts while he was on base. They could probably do with a distraction from the fact that their names were all over the news.

Barton and Song and the Doctor greeted each other like old friends and comrades-in-arms, a sight that actually made Fury’s morally ambiguous heart feel a little fuzzy. Or maybe it was simply that it was funny to see his agents just go along with get hugged and kissed on both cheeks, continental-style. Either way. Fury stood as they turned their attention to him.

“The Doctor has volunteered to do some freelance work for us,” Fury told his agents. “I’d like the two of you to oversee his work and act as his liaisons with R&D.” He smiled sidelong at the Doctor. “Just to make sure SHIELD procedure is observed.”

“So, what are you working on?” Clint asked the Doctor.

“I don’t know. Nicky’s keeping me in suspense.”

“I’ll let you know by tomorrow morning,” Fury said. “In the meantime agents, I’ll let you help the Doctor get settled in.”

*****

The next morning, River went to the guest residence hall to collect the Doctor. She knocked on the door of Apartment #11. There was no answer. After a few moments, River entered the access code and let herself in.

The interior of the apartment was dark and appeared deserted. The space had the look and feel of an area that hadn’t been touched since the last time SHIELD housekeeping had swept through. There was no sign at all that it currently contained an occupant. . . save for the TARDIS sitting in the middle of the living room.

River shook her head, pushed open the TARDIS door, and stepped inside. 

The control room was empty, but River smiled as she was immediately greeted by a friendly psychic bump of recognition. This ability to communicate (after a fashion) with the TARDIS was one of the gifts of River’s Vortex-scrambled genetics. She often thought that being greeted by the TARDIS was like having a cat rub up against you—if the cat in question were infinite in size, immensely old, and terrifyingly powerful. 

The TARDIS had always welcomed River aboard in this manner. The first time it had happened it had nearly sent her running out the door again in sheer panic. (Granted, that had been an unsettling day all around.) Now that little presence at the back of her head when she was on board the ship was a comfort.

“Hello, old girl.” River rested a hand against the wall. “It’s good to see you again, too. Where’s our boy then, eh?”

A faint sound from down one of the corridors caught her attention and an encouraging psychic nudge made River turn her steps in that direction. The sound clarified into music. River followed it through the winding corridors until she finally found the source.

She had never seen this room before. That was not in and of itself unusual; on an infinitely large ship, there were more rooms she hadn’t seen than ones she had. This one looked like an off-kilter version of every conspiracy nut mission control center River had ever seen. The walks were covered with scribbled notes and charts. Beethoven’s Fifth was playing on an old phonograph, but the Victorian sound system was sharply at odds with the bank of monitors and computer equipment that River could see from the doorway. In the middle of it all, sitting in a battered leather desk chair, was the Doctor.

He was so absorbed in whatever he was looking at on the screens that he didn’t appear to notice River at all. She slipped into the room, curious as to what had him so engrossed. She caught her breath when she saw the faces of Madame Kovarian and Dr. Weatherby on the central screen.

The Doctor was out of his chair in an instant.

“River!” He looked guiltily over his shoulder at the monitors. “What are you doing here?”

River ignored the question, averting her eyes from the screen and edging past the Doctor to look at the collage on the wall. There were star charts, what River suspected were Time charts, photographs of people and ships and buildings, hand-scrawled lists, and typed interview transcripts. She turned back to the monitors. The smaller screens displayed more of the same, but Kovarian and Weatherby, the two heads of the Silence, held the place of honor.

“You’re investigating the Silence,” River said.

Well, of course he would be, wouldn’t he? 

“Guilty,” the Doctor replied. 

River turned her eyes away from the screen to look at him. “What have you found?”

“Much less than I would like,” the Doctor admitted, his mouth thinning into a frustrated line. “For a large and loud group of fanatics they’ve been difficult to track in both Time and Space. And I haven’t yet had a chance to properly interview the one person I know who has the most thorough knowledge of them.”

“Me.”

The Doctor had heard an overview of River’s life story over pizza the night after Demons Run. No doubt he had been taking mental notes the whole time, but there were a lot of details that hadn’t gotten covered.

“They raised you,” the Doctor said. “They were your keepers, your family, for decades. When’s the last time you saw any of them?”

“Not since I ran away from them. That was more than a decade ago,” River said. “Even before that, though, I had started to distance myself from them. After Uncle Robert and Aunt Elizabeth died. . .well, a lot changed after that. I’d check in when Kovarian and Weatherby required it and went my own way the rest of the time.”

“Do you think they’ll ever come after you?”

“I used to assume they would,” River said. “Back then I had a new face, a new name, and I’d been moved thousands of miles from my last known location. Given the circumstances I disappeared under, the Silence would have had good reason to think me dead. It took a while to shake the fear that they’d find me, though. I kept my ear to the ground for the first couple of years after I ran, but I never heard so much as a whisper. And now it’s been so long. . .” River shrugged with a rueful smile. “Maybe they’ve forgotten about me.”

“They can travel in Time, and you are not that naïve, River.”

“No,” River agreed. “But even if they were to turn up on my doorstep tomorrow, it wouldn’t do them any good. They have no power over me anymore, and I won’t give them what they want.”

“Namely my corpse,” the Doctor said.

“So long as your corpse doesn’t fall on the Fields of Trenzalore,” River said dryly. 

“Ah, yes. _On the Fields of Trenzalore, at the fall of the eleventh, a question will be asked. A question that must never, ever be answered._ Because if it does ‘Silence will fall.’”

River was not at all surprised that the Doctor had hunted down the prophecy. It was the key tenant of the Silence’s beliefs. It was a key to getting inside the cult’s collective head and trying to figure out how they might think.

“It might even be worth taking that particular fall,” the Doctor added grimly, glaring at the images of Madame Kovarian and Dr. Weatherby, “if it meant putting an end to them. But finding Trenzalore is proving to be a bit of a sticking point.”

“Don’t talk like that,” River said. “In fact, don’t even think like that.”

The Doctor had probably been doing what the Silence had unsuccessfully done during River’s time with them. Namely, look through the vastness of Time and Space for a planet, a country, or a city called Trenzalore. 

It was highly unlikely either the Doctor or the Silence would think to look for it within SHIELD. River only knew of Trenzalore’s location due to a freak twist of circumstances. Last year she, Clint, and Phil had had to make an emergency landing at an underground, isolated, and highly classified SHIELD outpost in Canada. The sole SHIELD agent assigned to the base had introduced it as the “Tree House,” otherwise known as the Triskelion Remote Emergency Northern Zone Auxiliary Location Offensive Response Encampment. 

The acronym hadn’t jumped out at River until late that night when she was starting to write up her report. The next morning when they had taken off to return to Headquarters, she had stared at the base’s small landing field until it had disappeared from sight. The Fields of Trenzalore. Not a planet. Not a city. Not a country or a kingdom or a grand battlefield. Just a clearing in the woods, hidden in plain sight inside of SHIELD.

For obvious reasons, River, Clint, and Phil had been keeping that secret tightly under wraps. They still had no idea what it might mean. All River knew was that that acronym couldn’t possibly be an accident.

River reached over and flipped a switch, sending all of the screens dark. “We need a change of topic,” she said briskly. Both from the conversation and her own thoughts.

The Doctor gave her a curious look. “Did you have a particular topic in mind?”

“Breakfast.” River smiled. “Fury’s chosen an assignment for you. Your research assistants are meeting us in the mess hall.”

*****

Clint was leaning against the wall near the main doors of the mess hall, ostensibly reading texts on his phone, when he spotted Agent Fitz and Agent Simmons approaching. _Ahead of schedule._ Per Fury, Fitz and Simmons had been instructed to meet him here at 0830 hours. It was only 0817.

 _Eager scientists incoming,_ he texted to River before pocketing his phone and pushing off the wall, turning to meet them. 

Fitz looked like he was at least trying to play it cool. Simmons, on the other hand, practically bounded up to Clint.

“Agent Barton?” she said, a little breathlessly. “We’re reporting for duty, sir.”

Clint made a mental note to keep this one away from the coffee. “Barton is fine,” he said. “Just. . .Jesus, not _sir._ ” It was one thing coming from his trainee classes, but he didn’t need _sirs_ from random agents who weren’t _that_ much younger than he was. “Come on. We’re meeting in one of the private dining rooms. Go ahead and grab your breakfast.”

Fitz and Simmons followed Clint into the mess hall. “I feel we must apologize for our lack of preparation,” Simmons said as they walked along.

Clint glanced aside at her quizzically, at which point Fitz jumped in.

“Yeah. Our supervising officer didn’t have any particulars about whatever project you want us to work on,” he said. “Ordinarily we would have started outlining ideas last night, but--”

“But without parameters we had no way of doing so,” Simmons finished. “All Dr. Locklear could tell us was that we had been requested for a high level, Avengers-related project, which in and of itself is extremely exciting, of course--”

Clint hit the brakes, turning to face the two scientists. “Okay. Did Dr. Locklear explain to you that the project is classified?” he asked.

Fitz and Simmons looked a little like kids whose teacher had caught them passing notes in class. “Well. . .yes,” Simmons said.

“So, maybe let’s not broadcast it to two hundred people,” Clint said, twirling his finger around to indicate the number of SHIELD agents and personnel who were currently in the mess hall. 

They looked so abashed that Clint now felt less like a mean teacher and more like a puppy kicker. He sighed. “Look, don’t worry about it. And don’t worry about not being prepped. You’ll get the details over breakfast. In the private dining room.” He nodded toward the lines. “Go on. Get your food and we’ll head on in.”

They hurried to do as ordered, and Clint shook his head as he watched them go. God, those two were green. They were also brilliant. More to the point, they had worked with the Doctor before. Apparently, they had been assigned to help the Doctor back in April when he’d been advising Fury on how to clean up the Chitauri mess in New York. It made sense that Fury would assign them to be his lab assistants now; they had already been exposed to the weirdness.

Clint moved to follow them but paused when he spotted a pair of people sitting at a table by the windows. Skye, the hacker who had recently been brought in by SHIELD, was eating breakfast with Grant Ward. 

Skye was far from Clint’s favorite person. He was still pretty pissed at her for outing him and River as Avengers. That said, he felt a knee-jerk impulse to sit her down and warn her off hanging out with Ward. He wouldn’t actually do it, of course. Clint’s dislike and distrust of Ward was based far more on instinct than physical evidence. And hell, there was probably nothing nefarious going on here. Ward had just spotted a pretty new face in the mess and decided to chat her up. 

Clint shook his head and went to get his own breakfast. Simmons and Fitz were already halfway through the line, and that gave Clint an idea. Maybe, if nothing else, he could try to steer some better friends in Skye’s direction. 

But first, they had some scientific horizons to expand.

*****

Between one thing and another, it had taken a little longer than Phil had anticipated to get Bruce Banner out to Headquarters from Manhattan this morning. But (silver linings) he _had_ come, even though Phil had been very upfront about what he wanted him to do.

Banner had the ability to turn into the Hulk at will. Unfortunately, he couldn’t reverse the process the same way. In order for Banner’s personality to reassert itself they just had to wait for the Hulk to calm down. Or get tired. Or bored. The fact that they didn’t even know what caused the reversal was part of the problem. That could be a big liability for the Avengers in the field. Fury had made “develop a failsafe in case of a Hulk rampage” a top priority. SHIELD R&D had been scratching their heads, so the Doctor’s arrival and his offer couldn’t have come at a better time. 

“You really think he’ll be able to help?” Banner asked as they carried their breakfast trays down the hall to their meeting room. 

“He’s the Doctor. It’s kind of what he does.” Phil gave Banner his best reassuring smile. “The Doctor’s smart. I don’t want to say that SHIELD R&D can’t think outside of the box, but. . .the Doctor has a much bigger box. Don’t worry. You’re in good hands.”

Banner still looked a little green (in the seasick sense, not the Hulking-out sense) but he nodded. Phil knew that Banner wanted this to work as much as the rest of them did, especially after that bizarre business in Washington DC. He had managed to keep it together during the alien “stress tests,” but if he had slipped, the Hulk would have been smashing his way around a confined space packed with civilians. Phil knew that that scenario scared the shit out of Banner, enough so that he had agreed to be a test subject.

Up ahead, the door of the men’s room swung open and Clint came out. “Hey. There you guys are,” he said.

“Yeah. I’m sorry we’re running late,” Phil said. “Have they gotten started without us?”

“Oh, yeah. It’s like the BBC on crack in there.” Clint stepped ahead of them so that he could get the door. “See for yourself.”

Clint wasn’t exaggerating. The Doctor, Agent Simmons, and Agent Fitz were sitting in a clump at the end of the table, all talking at once. It sounded like they were talking over each other. On a closer listen Phil realized that they actually were in the middle of what sounded like a highly technical, multi-layered round robin, picking up on each other’s sentences and thoughts midstream. Well, that would seem to bode well.

They didn’t even notice the new arrivals for a moment. River was sitting a bit apart from them, leaning comfortably back in her chair and cupping her mug of tea in her hands. She glanced up and caught Phil’s eye, and couldn’t quite repress an amused smile. The Doctor picked up on their presence a half a second later.

“Bruce! Our guest of honor in the flesh.” Banner had just enough time to set his breakfast tray down before the Doctor rose and gave him a back-thumping hug. “Good to see you again. We were just talking through some ideas.” 

Once they were all settled around the table, Banner gave the Doctor a cautiously hopeful look.

“I don’t suppose,” he said, “that there’s any way you can figure this out without the Other Guy, is there?”

One of the things that Phil had always appreciated about the Doctor was that he did not, as a rule, deal in false comfort. But he managed to do so in a way that was in and of itself comforting. 

“I’m afraid not,” the Doctor replied frankly. “If we’re going to find the key to defusing the Hulk, we’re going to need the Hulk. But don’t worry. This is a judgement-free zone.”

“Thanks, but that’s not what I’m worried about,” Banner said. He was sitting across the table from Phil; Banner caught his eye, appealing to him directly. “You know it’s dangerous. The Hulk, even when I control how he comes out, is dangerous. And I have no idea how he’ll react to you guys trying to lull him or whatever. For all I know he could consider it a threat. It could wind up being the Helicarrier all over again.”

“What happened on the Helicarrier?” Simmons said, sounding worried. Phil ignored the question.

“We’ve taken that into consideration,” he assured Banner. “SHIELD has a secure chamber where the experiments can be conducted. The Hulk won’t be able to break out, and it’s big enough for all of you to maneuver in.”

“All of us?” This time it was Agent Fitz chiming in from the sidelines. “So. . .we’re going to be in the room with the Hulk?”

Phil thought the young man might have gone a little pale, but he was Scottish so it was hard to tell. 

“That’s right,” the Doctor said cheerfully, clapping a hand on Fitz’s shoulder. “You’ll be in the thick of it. It’ll be very exciting. Right, Bruce?”

Banner just shook his head and reached for his cup of coffee. “This is going to be a long week.”

“But if we hit upon a solution, it’ll be worth it,” Phil pointed out, and after a second, Banner nodded in agreement.

*****

_Experiment #1_

By the next morning, Project Lullaby was ready to commence.

River went over the checklist on her datapad one last time. All parties were present and accounted for, including Rogers and Stark (here to observe and for moral support). All the equipment the Doctor had requested from SHIELD was in place. All recording devices were enabled and ready to go. Medical was on standby, just in case.

On the other side of the floor-to-ceiling observation windows, in the large, round, vibranium-reinforced chamber, the Doctor and his team were making final preparations. The TARDIS was parked in the center of the chamber, its doors wide open. Simmons had had a very interesting reaction to seeing the TARDIS, clutching Fitz’s arm and literally jumping up and down with excitement. From what River gathered from listening in on the two scientists, Simmons had seen the TARDIS before, last year at the SHIELD encampment in New Mexico. 

_God, that really was only a year and a half ago,_ River thought. That had been the beginning in a way. That was where they had first met Thor. That was the first they’d ever heard of Loki. Had the world always changed so quickly?

River glanced over her shoulder as the door opened and Clint and Cap came in carrying cardboard trays. “Caffeine run accomplished,” Clint said, handing one of the cups to her. “I found some Irish Breakfast in the break room.”

“My hero. Thanks.”

“How’s it going in there?” Rogers asked, coming to stand on her other side, looking out into the chamber. 

“They’re just about ready to get started,” River said.

“What are they trying first?” Clint asked.

“Targeted sonic frequencies,” River said. “The Doctor is leading with one of his strengths. He’s something of an expert at sonics,” she added for Rogers’s benefit.

Out in the chamber, the Doctor, Simmons, and Fitz had their heads bent over a datapad. The Doctor was making some final adjustments to his sonic screwdriver. Banner was standing a short distance away talking to Phil and Stark; last minute reassurances, by the look of it. River saw Stark grip Banner’s shoulder and say something with a wide grin. It must have been a patented Starkian wisecrack, because River saw Phil roll his eyes while Banner managed to summon up a wan smile. 

“Why do they have the TARDIS in the chamber?” Rogers asked.

“Bunker,” Clint replied, taking a sip of his coffee.

“Bunker?”

“The TARDIS is practically indestructible,” River said. “It wasn’t just good luck that she came through the Chitauri invasion unscathed. If the Hulk decides to take these experiments amiss, they can just duck inside. No amount of Hulk-smashing is going to damage her. She’s not exactly crazy about the plan, but she won’t let them come to any harm.”

She could feel Cap giving her the side-eye. “The ship told you that?”

“More or less.”

Significantly more than less. When River had been in the TARDIS a few minutes ago, that normally calm psychic presence had felt sharp and prickly against her mind. The last time the TARDIS had tangled with the Hulk had been during the Helicarrier attack. River had been a bit preoccupied at the time, but Amy had told her about it after the fact. The Hulk had, in fact, attempted to smash the TARDIS; the TARDIS had responded by winking herself and her occupants back to fifteenth century Tuscany and then refused to move for almost a week.

River eyed Agents Simmons and Fitz. Depending on how this played out, those two could be in for an interesting time of it.

Finally, it was go-time. Phil and Stark came to join the rest of them in the observation room. River smiled as she watched the Doctor literally shoo Fitz and Simmons toward the TARDIS’s open doorway. The Silence had always preached that the Doctor had a callous disregard for human life, that at best he viewed them as amusing but ultimately disposable playthings. River had believed that herself for a very long time, because what reason did she have to question the people who had raised her? She’d learned better since, though. Dealing with the Doctor never had or would be safe, but the Doctor did his best. He shielded the people around him as well as he could.

Once his assistants were safely poised by the entrance of the TARDIS, the Doctor gave Banner the high sign. Banner stripped off his shirt, took a deep bracing breath, and then the man’s body began to shift. 

River felt a twinge of sympathy at the looks on Fitz’s and Simmons’ faces as their research subject grew and grew and _grew_ before their eyes, morphing into a giant green monster. The Hulk roared, and that was not a sound that River had been anxious to ever hear again after what had happened back on the Helicarrier. He didn’t attack though, not even when the Doctor walked right up to him.

“Here now, Bruce,” the Doctor said, cheerfully. They could hear him clearly over the speakers in the observation room. “All right, there? This won’t hurt a bit.” He raised his sonic screwdriver, aimed it at the Hulk, and activated it. 

“Oh, shit,” Clint said.

The Hulk’s bellow rattled the glass of the observation window and everyone in the room took an involuntary step back. “Do you think he took that as a threat?” Phil asked.

“He definitely took it amiss,” River said as the Doctor dodged under the Hulk’s swinging arm, frantically adjusting the settings on his sonic screwdriver as he went.

_Doctor, if you get yourself killed, Amy is going to murder me._

“Should we do something?” Rogers said as they watched the Doctor dodge around the Hulk, aiming and firing his screwdriver as he went.

“Like what?” They didn’t have an effective way to slow down or neutralize the Hulk. That’s why they were all here in the first place. All they could really do was watch the Doctor escape and evade his way around the chamber until he was finally able to dive inside the TARDIS with Fitz and Simmons, slamming the doors shut behind him.

“I could go in there. Try to talk him down,” Stark said. He even made a move for the door, but Clint caught him by the arm.

“Don’t be an idiot,” Clint said. 

The Hulk roared, battering at the TARDIS with fists and open-handed swipes. Of course, the TARDIS remained intact and unmoved, which just seemed to anger the Hulk further.

“Well, I think we can rule out targeted sonic frequencies as a solution to Banner’s condition,” Phil said. “How long do you think it’s going to take him to come down again?”

“Hours?” River guessed. “Just based on past precedent. It took about two hours for him to come down after the Battle, and he talked like that was incredibly. . .”

River trailed off, frowning when she heard the distinctive sound of the TARDIS’s engines firing up.

“Where is he going?” Rogers asked. 

“I’m pretty sure that’s not the Doctor,” River said. “It’s _her._ The TARDIS.”

Even as she said it the TARDIS pulsed and faded from sight, taking the Doctor, Simmons, and Fitz. The Hulk almost sounded angrier than he had before over its escape. Now deprived of the TARDIS, he started hammering at the walls of the holding chamber. 

“Well, shit. What do we do now?” Stark asked.

*****

Realistically there was nothing they could do but wait. Phil wasn’t crazy about it, but the TARDIS could quite literally be anywhere in Time and Space. He called Security and ordered them to keep an eye out on the base, in case the TARDIS turned up nearby. River tried calling the Doctor repeatedly on his cell phone, but no one was picking up.

It had been over four hours now, and nothing.

Clint had pulled out a library book. Rogers doodled on a legal pad. Stark paced. The Hulk bellowed off and on in the background, but it seemed like his heart wasn’t in it. Phil had been at this (being a SHIELD agent and running with the Doctor) too long to panic, but that didn’t exactly mean he was calm. _Great. Just great. You let two rookie sci-ops agents go in there and now they’re in the wind. Possibly a deadly Vortex wind._

With nothing to do but kill time, Phil’s mind turned to other matters, like the crazy stuff that had happened on their trip to Washington DC last month. Phil was stretched out on the hard couch at the back of the observation room with one arm draped across his eyes, humming Toto’s _Africa._

“Are you still obsessing over that?” Clint asked.

“I’m not obsessing,” Phil replied.

“You have been a little preoccupied by it,” Cap said diplomatically.

_Great. They’re joining forces._

“Okay, fine. My girlfriend got beamed up by unknown aliens who apparently use the same hold music as SHIELD. I have been a little preoccupied trying to figure out what that means.”

“A better question to be preoccupied by is why does SHIELD have such dorky hold music?” Stark said.

Which, Phil thought, was kind of a fair question.

“So, how long do we wait before we inform Fury that the Doctor has vanished with two of our scientists?” River asked.

Phil lifted his arm and looked at River. She was sitting on the table on the other side of the room, feet swinging a few inches above the floor. 

“How long have you worked here? Fury already knows,” Phil said.

“Guys?” Stark was taking a turn standing at the observation window. “It looks like the Green Tide is going out.” He turned. “Banner’s coming back.”

By the time they all gathered around Banner in the chamber only sign of the Hulk was a slight green tinge to the man’s skin, and even that faded as Phil watched. Banner had shrunk down to his normal size and he was huddled on his side, his back pressed against the wall. He blinked up at them as Stark draped a thick blanket over him. De-hulking tended to leave Banner a little shocky.

“I told you guys this was a bad idea,” Banner groaned, sitting up. He pulled the blanket tighter around himself. “I’m guessing sonic frequencies didn’t work.”

“Not so much,” River said, handing him a bottle of Gatorade. 

Banner took a long drink before he seemed to realize that something was off. He looked past the rest of them to the center of the chamber. “Where are the Doctor and Fitz and Simmons?”

“Well,” Phil said slowly, not wanting to cause Banner any undue alarm, “that’s. . .”

He was interrupted by a gust of wind and a very familiar sound. Phil turned to look over his shoulder in time to see the TARDIS phase into existence in the exact same spot it had left. The door burst open and two filthy, bedraggled people spilled out.

“We’re back. Oh, thank God, we’re back,” Simmons said. 

Fitz was the one to spot Phil and the others by the far wall. “Hey, look! They’re still here. Hey.” Fitz began to jog toward them. “Hey, how long were we gone? How many days has it been?”

“Not even one day,” Phil said, standing up and coming to meet him halfway. “You’ve only been gone a few---oh, holy _God.”_

Phil quickly pressed his nose into the material of his sleeve, and seriously tried to keep from gagging. Simmons had followed Fitz, and the smell rolling off of both of them was horrible enough to knock a person over. Phil glanced behind him to find that his entourage had followed him. Stark was making an epic face. Banner was holding his nose. Rogers, Clint, and River were more stoic, giving no sign that they smelled anything out of the ordinary.

“Ah, Phil!” The Doctor had appeared and, if possible, he was even more of a mess than the other two. “Sorry to disappear like that. We ended up on the Physis Ark. Zoological transport ship. Things and stuff happened. What did we miss?”

“Not much,” Phil said, cautiously lowering his arm from his nose. No, the smell was just as bad. “Look, we’re going to need to debrief, but not until you guys hit the closest locker room. Now.”

An hour later they convened in one of the conference rooms. Banner was now fully clothed and the Doctor, Fitz, and Simmons were scrubbed pink and considerably less offensive. It wasn’t strictly necessary to include the Doctor’s side trip into the report of Day 1 of their experiments on Banner, but Phil was thorough. And curious.

“There were space monkeys. Terrifying space monkeys,” Simmons. “Sir, it was horrifying.”

“Right,” Phil said, dutifully noting it down.

“They were everywhere,” Fitz added. “And completely mad. It kind of reminded me of my bar mitzvah party.”

“Bar mitzvah?” Stark frowned. “Aren’t you Scottish?”

“Well, yeah, but I’m from Glasgow.”

“How long were you gone?” River asked. “It was almost five hours on this end. How long were you on the Ark?”

“Six days, give or take?” Simmons replied. “It’s somewhat subjective, really, which makes it a bit hard to say. The ship was operating on a thirty-hour day cycle. It was surprisingly difficult to adjust to.”

“Well,” Clint raised his cup of coffee to Fitz and Simmons, “congratulations on losing your time travel virginity.”

The Doctor gave Clint a scandalized look across the conference table. “ _Not_ the terms we use.”

“Okay, let’s get back on track, people,” Phil said. “The sonic frequencies were a no-go. Doctor, what’s the next option in the playbook?”

“Oh, I have loads of ideas,” the Doctor replied. “Don’t worry, Bruce.” He reached over to pat Banner on the back. “We have not yet begun to fight.”

Banner spoke up for the first time. “If it’s not too much trouble, can we fight tomorrow? I’m beat.”

Phil looked Banner over with a critical and slightly concerned eye. He had dispensed with the blanket once he’d gotten redressed, but his hands were wrapped tightly around a large mug of River’s tea. He looked better than he had an hour ago, but still wiped out. 

“Absolutely,” Stark answered before Phil could. He looked around the table. “Well-being of the patient, right? He needs time to recover.”

“As the team captain. Or. . .whatever.” Rogers cleared his throat awkwardly. “I agree with Stark.”

Phil was too experienced an agent to let a smile slip at this point. These people were gelling as a team whether they were aware of it or not.

“It’s probably better not to subject you to unnecessary strain any more than we have to,” Phil said to Banner. “Doctor, I trust that won’t be a problem?”

“One experiment per day,” the Doctor said, sipping his own mug of tea. “Not my usual pace, but it’s probably for the best. We can spend the evening getting things set up for the next few trials. Right, FitzSimmons?”

Given the day (or six days) they’d had, Phil would have expected that Fitz and Simmons would just as soon go to their bunks and collapse. Instead they perked up eagerly. Scientists.

“Okay then.” Phil rose from the table. “In that case you’re all dismissed for the day. We’ll reconvene at 0900 tomorrow.”

*****

_Experiment #2_

Since audio hadn’t worked, the Doctor decided to go visual for his next experiment. Specific sequences of flashing lights, he explained, could induce a calming pseudo-hypnotic state that could potentially reverse Hulk-rage.

Clint whistled at the sight of the lighting array that the Doctor and the science kids had put together in the chamber. “You did this in one night?” he asked.

“Yeah. Well, I’m pretty sure it was one night,” Fitz replied. “We had to pop off somewhere to pick up some special parts the Doctor wanted. Do you ever get used to that? The bouncing around in Time and Space?”

“Do you mean do you ever stop getting freaked out by it?” Clint asked. “Yeah, that part wears off after a while. It never stops being cool, though.”

“All right, everyone. We’re about to get started.” The Doctor was handing out dark tinted safety goggles. “Be sure to put these on before the light show starts up. We don’t want any of you accidentally dozing off.”

The lighting array really was an impressive piece of engineering, no doubt about it. It was too bad that it only survived for about ninety seconds after the Hulk was unleashed.

“Here we go again,” Clint said as the Hulk tore down half of the array, flinging it across the chamber while the Doctor, Fitz, and Simmons dove into the TARDIS.

“And again,” River added as the TARDIS powered up and got the fuck out of Dodge for the second time.

Phil sighed, pushing his goggles up onto his forehead. “Is the TARDIS going to do this every time?” he asked River.

“In my educated opinion? Yes, most likely,” she replied. At Phil’s look she shrugged. “She’s annoyed and she’s making a point.”

Clint shook his head as they watched the Hulk rage around the empty chamber. “I wonder where they went this time?”

*****

“The planet Sarjana.”

Just as she’d had done yesterday, the TARDIS reappeared in the chamber in the precise spot she’d left from within minutes of the Hulk transforming back into Banner. (It had only taken three hours this time.) How exactly the TARDIS knew when the Hulk was gone, River couldn’t say. The ship just had her ways. When the Doctor, Fitz, and Simmons disembarked, they were considerably less of a mess than they had been yesterday. In fact, they looked rather refreshed.

Which was interesting given the answer to the question _So, where did you go?_

“Sarjana?” River replied in disbelief. “The borderline barbaric, incredibly xenophobic, and hostile to outsiders planet of Sarjana?”

“You’ve been there?” Rogers asked.

“No.” River shook her head. “But I’ve heard enough about it. No one goes to Sarjana unless it’s somehow unavoidable.”

“They’ve undergone a few changes recently,” the Doctor replied. River didn’t miss the way his eyes cut to Simmons and Fitz. “Very recently.”

“Oh, it’s a great story. Can I tell it?” Fitz said. “I’m telling it. So, we land, and there are these huge red plants. . .”

It was indeed quite the story. Fitz had a flair. (Naturally. He _was_ a Scot.) There was drama, pathos, comedy, and even an unexpected conclusion.

“And then,” Fitz said, leaning back in his chair to deliver the denouement, “they made Jemma their queen.”

Every head at the table turned to Agent Simmons, who blushed almost neon pink. 

“It was nothing. Really,” she said. “I’m not even really sure how it happened. Something about the circumstances of our adventures there apparently mirrored key passages of a popular prophecy.”

“Ooof,” River said. Clint lightly kicked her ankle under the table.

“They must have thought very highly of you,” Banner offered. 

“So, Thor aside, is this the first time you’ve had royalty working for SHIELD?” Stark asked.

“That’s classified,” Phil said. 

“Are they okay with their queen just up and going home?” Rogers asked.

Simmons nodded. “Oh, yes. They were very understanding. They seemed to anticipate it, in fact. The prophecy indicated that the monarch would come and go from Elsewhere.”

“Yeah. A bit like Narnia,” Fitz interjected. 

“There’s a highly organized stewardship system in place,” Simmons continued. “I got them off to a good start on reforms and left parameters for the rest. They seemed quite excited. We got the impression that nothing there has changed for a while.”

“What did you reform?” Clint asked curiously.

“Let’s see.” Simmons began to tick items off on her fingers. “I introduced comprehensive health care, free public education, the forty-hour work week, library funding. . .”

“How long exactly were you there?” Phil asked.

“Three days,” the Doctor replied. “Agent Simmons is very good at maximizing her time.”

Phil shook his head. At least if they ever wound up on Sarjana, they now had one hell of an in.

*****

_Experiment #3_

Phil dutifully wrote up the reports of the first two experiments for Project Lullaby and submitted them to Fury. After some consideration he included addendums detailing Agents Fitz and Simmons’ extracurricular trips with the Doctor. It was only right that the Director be apprised of his agents’ activities in Time and Space. (Yes, it was a little hypocritical given that Phil never wrote up reports whenever he, Clint, and River ran with the Doctor. There were advantages to being Level 7.)

Fury, mercifully, had been giving them space on Project Lullaby. He hadn’t commented on the addendums to Phil. Nadine Washington, though, had said in passing that she hadn’t heard laughter like that coming from behind the Director’s door since his last birthday present from Director Downing had arrived.

The Doctor, Fitz, and Simmons were still working their way through the senses in their attempts to crack Project Lullaby. Experiment #3 was aimed at Banner’s olfactory system.

“Smell is probably our most primal sense,” the Doctor lectured the group gathered in the chamber. “It helps us attune ourselves to our environment in ways we’re not even consciously aware of. The right smell can awaken memories that have lain dormant for decades. And—most importantly in our case—they can affect mood. Dr. Simmons? If you please?”

Simmons carried over a large round bottle filled with a faintly gold-colored liquid. 

“The Doctor has an impressive chemical inventory,” she said, “many of which we don’t even have access to here on Earth. We used it to concoct this.” She carefully uncapped the bottle.

Almost immediately, Phil felt a wave of blissful well-being flow over him. He mentally tried to sort out the smells, but found he could only pick out a note or two here and there. Whatever it was, his brain registered it as safety and contentment. It made him think of riding in the front seat of the family car, squashed between his parents, on a long drive. Or lying half-asleep in Valerie’s bed on a rainy morning.

“Nice, eh?” the Doctor beamed. “It would make a lovely perfume except for—oops!” 

The Doctor quickly grabbed River, who had leaned forward to take a deeper sniff of the Project Lullaby concoction. Her eyes had glazed over and she wobbled on her feet. When the Doctor pulled her back she shook her head and immediately looked much more alert.

“Except for that,” the Doctor said, letting her go. “We added a splash of an airborne sedative, just for maximum effect. Sorry. Should have warned you about that.”

River glared at him. “Oh, you think so, do you?”

“All right,” Phil said. “Let’s give it a go.”

*****

Unfortunately, the smell bomb was, well, a bomb. As a consolation prize, the Doctor, Fitz, and Simmons returned this time with madeleines from tea with Proust.

*****

“I think we’ve been going about this the wrong way,” the Doctor said.

Bruce raised his head from his folded arms. He was beat. Changing into the Hulk over and over was taxing enough. The mental stress in between the experiments didn’t help. Every time he got ready to change, Bruce had the same semi-panicked thought: What if the Other Guy doesn’t let go this time?

That was the only reason he was still going along with these experiments of the Doctor’s. So that his new teammates would have some chance of helping him if that ever happened.

“So, what’s the right way?” Tony asked.

“Not sure yet.” The Doctor was pacing the length of the conference room. “I’m still thinking.”

“I suppose there’s always just the straight tranquilizer option.” Fitz cast an apologetic look at Bruce. “I know they’d have to be really, really strong and fast-acting. . .”

Bruce was already shaking his head. “It won’t work,” he said. “Trust me. Many have tried. Gas? Darts? It never ends well.”

It never ended well for the ones trying to take him down that is, not to mention God knew how many innocent bystanders. Tranquilizers had been Ross’s favored approach to dealing with the Hulk (before breaking out the real guns, anyway). Even on the two occasions when Ross’s people got to the drop on Bruce and tried to take him down with drugs, the Hulk had taken over almost before Bruce had time to feel his knees go weak.

The Doctor, Fitz, and Simmons started lobbing ideas back and forth. It only took a few seconds before Tony jumped in as well. Coulson, Barton, Song, and Rogers were engrossed in their own conversation; Bruce could hear words like i>strategy and _deterrents_ and _failsafe._ The two competing talking pools were making Bruce’s nagging headache worse.

Everyone went quiet when Bruce abruptly stood up from the table. “Sorry. Just. . .bathroom,” Bruce said, making his way to the door. He waved to the two groups. “Carry on,” he said as he quickly escaped into the hallway.

Bruce bypassed the men’s room and made his way straight to the lounge at the far end of the corridor. It was small, but it had a sofa, some potted plants, and floor-to-ceiling windows. It was a drizzly November afternoon, so the view wasn’t the most inspiring. Still, it was quiet and calmer here. Bruce settled down on the sofa with a sigh, leaned his head back, and closed his eyes. 

He got about fifteen minutes of peace before he heard footsteps coming up the hall. Probably Tony, he thought. Possibly Agent Coulson. There was even an outside chance that it was Cap. The footsteps came into the lounge and someone sat down on the other end of the sofa.

Bruce counted out a minute before he opened his eyes and realized that he’d lost his little guessing game with himself, because the Doctor was sitting beside him.

“All right, there?” he asked.

“Oh. Yeah.” Bruce quickly straightened up out of his slump. “Sorry. I just needed a little breathing room, I guess. “

“Understandable. I know that this isn’t easy for you, Bruce.”

Like Tony, the Doctor had the talent of being able to go from outlandish whimsy to bursts of mad genius to serious candor. This, now, was the latter of those.

“You know, Doctor, I appreciate what you’re trying to do for me,” Bruce said, “but I have to tell you, I think you’re wasting your time.”

“We’ve only been at it for a few days.”

“Yeah, _here_ we’ve only been at it for a few days,” Bruce said. “But I’ve been at it a lot longer. I spent years on the run, on my own, trying to find a cure. I tried everything. Experimental drugs. Meditation. Music therapy. Hell, I tried to blow my own brains out and even that didn’t work. All I could really do was try to suppress it. Just keep the Other Guy shut up in a room and try not to do anything to make him come out. And now with these experiments. . .”

“I keep asking you to let him out,” the Doctor supplied.

“Yeah.” Bruce blew out a sharp breath. “Like anybody needs to see that over and over and over.”

The Doctor eyed Bruce shrewdly. “You’re ashamed of him, aren’t you?” He sounded like a man who had just come to a somewhat surprising conclusion. “You’re ashamed of the Hulk. You don’t like for people to see him.”

“Well, yeah? Is that such a shock?” Bruce made a face at the rain blowing against the windows. “I mean there are dark sides and then there are _dark sides.”_

In Bruce’s case his dark side was a literal monster. He was only kind of, sort of comfortable with his new teammates seeing it, let alone Fitz and Simmons and whoever might be checking in on the video footage.

“The Hulk is nothing to be ashamed of,” the Doctor said emphatically. “Every intelligent being in the universe is part light and part dark. The demarcation between the two is just more overt in you than it is in most people. If it makes you feel better, my dark side makes the Hulk look like a small, sunny child frolicking in a field of wildflowers.” 

Bruce believed it. He’d seen a bit of that side at Demons Run when he’d watched the Doctor take Madame Kovarian and Col. Manton to task. Barton had once remarked, _The Doctor is one of the best people in the Universe. He’s also one of the scariest sons-of-bitches in the Universe._ Bruce hadn’t really gotten it until Demons Run. 

“You know,” the Doctor continued thoughtfully, oblivious to Bruce’s mental meanderings, “that could be part of our problem.”

“What could be part of our problem?” Bruce asked. 

“We’re coming at this from the wrong side,” the Doctor replied. “We’ve been concentrating our experiments on the Hulk. We should be concentrating them on _you.”_

“Okay,” Bruce said slowly. “But how? The whole point of the experiments is to put the Hulk to sleep so that I can take over again. If I’m not even present. . .”

“But you are present. You and the Hulk are the same being.” The Doctor held his hand up as Bruce opened his mouth to protest. “I know you don’t like to think in those terms, but you are. So, we just need a string.”

“String?”

“A string to tie around your finger, so that when the Hulk is busy smashing, we can tug it to wake you up.”

“When you say _string,_ you don’t mean literal string, right?”

The Doctor hopped up and started pacing back and forth in a way that reminded Bruce of Tony when Tony was having a brainstorm. 

“Real string? Oh, no. We’re deep in metaphorical waters here. The string is just a signal. Well, that should be easy enough. We anchor it in you while you’re Bruce. Then when you’re the Hulk, we can give the signal and wake you up and let you take over again.” The Doctor rounded on Bruce, hands clasped in the pose of a man who had just had a brilliant idea. “Tell me, how do you feel about being hypnotized?”

“Um. Not great?” Bruce replied.

“Excellent.” The Doctor took Bruce by the arm, hauled him to his feet, and began to tug him down the hallway to the conference room. “Come on. We need to put our heads together with your team.”

*****

Despite the man’s misgivings, Bruce proved to be reasonably easy to hypnotize. Honestly, wrangling the rest of them was the challenging bit.

“Come on, you lot. Give the man room to breathe.” 

They were set up in a small, private lounge in the Administration Center, one that clearly looked like it was intended for proper VIPs. The Doctor figured if he was going to ask Bruce to undergo hypnosis (a prospect that he clearly had some reservations about) the least he could do was take steps to make sure the man was as relaxed as possible. 

For SHIELD this lounge was almost cozy, with dim lighting and a view of treetops out of the windows. The sofa had been deemed “actually pretty comfortable” by Bruce; under the Doctor’s direction, Clint and Steve had moved it into the center of the room. The Doctor had pulled a straight-backed chair up alongside it for himself. 

The most important element in setting the mood (at least in the Doctor’s estimation) was that the people Bruce trusted the most were gathered around him. Very, very closely gathered.

The Doctor looked up and around at the ring of faces surrounding him and Bruce. Simmons and Fitz, not being members of the inner circle, were keeping a little bit of distance. The others—Phil, Clint, River, Steve, and Tony—were inside the “personal bubble” zone, wearing expressions ranging from expectation to curiosity to skepticism. 

“Really,” the Doctor said, “back up just one step? Except you, Tony. You stay close.”

Bruce and Tony were friends, and the Doctor knew that Tony was easily the one Bruce trusted the most. Tony smiled not a little bit smugly and stepped back up, standing at the Doctor’s shoulder. The Doctor turned to Bruce.

“Ready?” he asked.

Bruce squirmed a little on the sofa cushions, adjusted the throw pillow under his head, and nodded. “You promise you won’t make me stand on the coffee table and crow like a chicken?”

“Promise.” The Doctor smiled, patting Bruce’s knee. “You’re in safe hands.”

There were thousands of ways to induce a state of hypnosis. Methods varied across species and planets and fashions in the practice came and went. The Doctor had always favored the old Earth standby, the pocket watch. (He _was_ a Time Lord after all.) His watch was a bit more elaborate than the average human hypnotist’s, with an intricate Gallifreyan face that spun and swirled in multiple directions and dimensions. Not traditional perhaps, but it worked very well.

The Doctor had given careful thought to the subliminal message he was implanting. It had to be something relatively short and simple, but not so much so that some random person could trigger it accidentally. It had to be memorable, but not common for the same reason. Fortunately, the Doctor had a vast trove of material to pull from.

“What is that? A nursery rhyme?” Tony asked as the Doctor put away his watch.

“I suppose it is, though not one from Earth. Well, not exactly.” The Doctor looked up at River who was standing behind the back of the sofa. “Has Amy ever told you the story about the Starship U.K.?”

“Of course,” River said. “That was the first time she ever traveled with you. You saved a star whale.”

“Yes, well, your mother gets most of the credit for saving the star whale.” The Doctor smiled at the memory. “Imagine,” he said for the benefit of the ones who didn’t know this story, “the population of an entire nation sailing through space on the back of an immense creature that they’d enslaved. No one on the ship realizes how their ship is powered because they had elected to forget. _Literally_ elected. But on a certain level they simply couldn’t forget, and so there were ominous legends and proverbs and, yes, nursery rhymes about _the beast below.”_

His audience was listening attentively. The Doctor went on.

“Then one day Amy and I landed. We upended things, because that’s just what I do, apparently. Amy freed the whale who, in spite of years of mistreatment, never had any intention of abandoning the people who needed him. And the people finally knew that they owed their lives to him. So, before we left, a little girl we met there wrote a new rhyme.”

“It’s oddly fitting,” Steve said. “Beast. Hulk.”

“Well, I do try,” the Doctor said. He turned his attention back to Bruce who was still in a deeply entranced state. “All right, Bruce. I’m going to count down to one. When I snap my fingers, you’ll wake up. Three. . .two. . . .one.”

_Snap._

Bruce blinked his way back to wakefulness and, after taking a moment to get his bearings, pushed himself up to a sitting position. 

“Did it work?” he asked.

“We’ve planted the signal,” the Doctor said. “Now we just need to see if it’s strong enough.”

*****

Tony insisted on being the first one to test the subliminal message. The Doctor tried to talk him out of it.

“You’ve been watching the experiments. You are aware of how dangerous it can be.”

“Yeah, but you said that Bruce trusts me the most,” Tony argued. “So, statistically I have the best chance of making it work, right? 

“Well. Possibly,” the Doctor said.

“And if we get it to work once, that could be. . .what? Like a psychological catalyst?” Tony continued. “Let Bruce see that it can work once, and it maybe it would be easier to make it work again.”

Or something. He was totally making all of this up. Psychology was not Tony’s field at all, in spite of Pepper’s off-and-on attempts over the years to get him to see a therapist. But it sounded good.

“Don’t worry,” he added at the Doctor’s doubtful look. “I’ve watched you enough to know the drill. If it looks like he’s about to smash me, I’ll haul ass into the TARDIS.”

To be honest, Tony wasn’t as entirely unconcerned as he tried to sound. But the Hulk had fought alongside him and the rest of the team in New York without causing any friendly fire casualties. He had saved Tony from spattering to a pulp on the pavement when he’d fallen out of the wormhole. He hadn’t _seriously_ tried to damage the Doctor during these experiments. So, there was a decent chance that Tony wouldn’t end up in traction in SHIELD Medical by the end of the day.

His self-preservation instincts still screamed a little as he stood in the middle of the chamber and watched Bruce test his boundaries for the umpteenth time. The Hulk paced along the chamber wall, occasionally bellowing and beating a fist against it. (Dude did not like being confined, not that Tony could really blame him.) SHIELD was going to have to do some serious refurbishment work after these experiments. Parts of the wall were looking a little dented, and there were some impressive scuffs in the observation window. Tony could see the rest of his team behind the window watching expectantly.

_Okay, Tony. Come on. Nothing to it._ “Hey there, big guy!”

The Hulk swung around to face him, and Tony was pretty sure he could feel hot breath even at this distance. He took a few steps closer holding up his hands in a conciliatory gesture and recited the weird rhyme he’d committed to memory.

_“In bed above we’re deep asleep,_   
_While greater love lies further deep._   
_This dream must end, the world must know,_   
_We all depend on the beast below.”_

It wasn’t exactly Shakespeare, but Rogers was right. It did kind of suit Bruce.

Something changed in the chamber, and it took a moment for Tony to realize that it had gone very quiet. The Hulk, who always seemed to rumble even when he was at rest, was quiet. He blinked at Tony, took a stumbling step backwards, and started to shrink.

The feeling you got in that moment when a solution finally clicked? It never got old. After all of their failures with Project Lullaby, this time the effects took under a minute. Tony was kneeling beside Bruce when he groggily pushed himself up to a sitting position.

“Can I take it that it worked?” Bruce asked.

“The answer was grade-school poetry from the future. Who knew?” Tony replied by way of confirmation. He looked over his shoulder. The Doctor was standing there, arms folded, looking over the scene with a satisfied smile. Beyond him, Tony could see the rest of the team amassed at the window, all of them smiling and looking relieved. Barton even gave him a brief thumbs up.

The Doctor squatted down beside them, patting Tony on the shoulder. “Well done.” To Bruce, “How do you feel?”

“Less like death warmed over than I usually do,” Bruce said, starting to push himself to his feet. Tony reached out to help him. “I’m not sure if that’s because of the lullaby or because I’ve done this so many times over the past week I’ve just gotten used to it.”

“We’ll find out,” the Doctor said. He looked ever so slightly apologetic. “We’ll need to have the rest of the team try out the lullaby as well. You’ll want to make sure they can all make it work before you find yourself in a situation where it _needs_ to work.”

Bruce couldn’t say that he relished the thought of hulking out that many more times, but he knew the Doctor was right. Knowing that the lullaby had worked, though, made it more tolerable.

“When do we start?”

*****

Grant Ward and Skye were camped out on Ward’s bunk, surrounded by junk food, a laptop sitting between them.

“Oh! There he goes,” Skye said as Bruce Banner started to shrink back down to his human form. “But wow. Cap definitely took the longest to get him to change. Over two minutes.”

“I’m noting it,” Ward replied, jotting the time down by Captain America’s name on the legal pad they were keeping score on. “No one’s beaten Stark’s time,” he added, reaching for another handful of popcorn.

On the laptop screen the Avengers, the Doctor, and the two SciTech agents gathered around Bruce Banner, helping him up out of the floor. Ward took careful mental note of their interactions. Project Lullaby had been quite the bonding experience for Fury’s little dream team.

“I have to say, this has been, like, the most fun I’ve had since I got here,” Skye said, reaching for her soda. “Thank you.”

“Hey, I just provided the snacks. You’re the one who hacked into the video feed,” Ward replied.

It hadn’t even been hard to convince Skye to do it, all in the name of good fun, of course. Skye was alone and out of place, not just at SHIELD but in the world in general. She needed a friend. All Ward had had to do to gain her trust was give her a little positive attention, express appreciation for her skill set, and hang out with her. And temporarily remove her monitoring bracelet of course, which he could easily do thanks to his clearance level. Drawing Skye into an act of harmless rebellion anchored the sense of solidarity.

Ward had started to use this ploy on River Song once, back when she’d first been brought in. It had even been fairly effective, but word had quickly come down from Madame Kovarian for him to back off. Ward didn’t know what the deal was with Song and the Silence, but they clearly had other plans for her. It was just as well. Even back then she’d already been pretty attached to Barton and Coulson.

With Skye though, Madame Kovarian had actively encouraged Ward to pursue a relationship. It was certainly no hardship on Ward’s part. Skye was smart, cute, and had a good sense of humor. He’d drawn rougher missions. 

And if this little joyride with the security feeds was any indication, Skye was going to be very useful to the Silence. They had identified her as a good prospect based on her illicit online activity. Then they’d maneuvered her into getting busted by SHIELD. Kovarian had bet on SHIELD deciding that Skye would make a good asset and keeping her around at HQ. Ward would be running her from here.

Skye herself was blissfully unaware of all of this. Sometimes the best asset was an unwitting one. Maybe, in time, she’d be ready to know who she really worked for. 

“So,” Skye said, grinning at Ward, “what shall we do next?”

“I’m sure we’ll think of something.”

**Author's Note:**

> Next up: _The Queens Sacrifice_! In which we learn how Melody Pond became River Song.


End file.
